<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 TRANSITIONAL//EN"> <HTML> <HEAD> <META HTTP-EQUIV="Content-Type" CONTENT="text/html; CHARSET=UTF-8"> <META NAME="GENERATOR" CONTENT="GtkHTML/3.26.0"> </HEAD> <BODY> On Fri, 2010-05-14 at 22:25 -0700, Alan Coopersmith wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE TYPE=CITE> <TT>+xserver.ent: $(top_builddir)/doc/xml/xserver.ent</TT> <TT>+       -rm -f $@</TT> <TT>+       ln -s $(top_builddir)/doc/xml/xserver.ent $@</TT> </BLOCKQUOTE> Autoconf suggest using $(LN_S) for better portability. <BLOCKQUOTE> — Macro: AC_PROG_LN_S </BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE> If ‘ln -s’ works on the current file system (the operating system and file system support symbolic links), set the output variable <TT>LN_S</TT> to ‘ln -s’; otherwise, if ‘ln’ works, set <TT>LN_S</TT> to ‘ln’, and otherwise set it to ‘cp -p’. If you make a link in a directory other than the current directory, its meaning depends on whether ‘ln’ or ‘ln -s’ is used. To safely create links using ‘$(LN_S)’, either find out which form is used and adjust the arguments, or always invoke <TT>ln</TT> in the directory where the link is to be created. In other words, it does not work to do: <PRE> $(LN_S) foo /x/bar </PRE> Instead, do: <PRE> (cd /x && $(LN_S) foo bar) </PRE> </BLOCKQUOTE> You may also take a look at AC_CONFIG_LINKS just in case (I thought I had seen it used somewhere): <BLOCKQUOTE> <PRE> <TT>AC_CONFIG_LINKS</TT> </PRE> </BLOCKQUOTE> <DL> <BLOCKQUOTE> <PRE> Automake will generate rules to remove configure generated links on ‘make distclean’ and to distribute named source files as part of ‘make dist’. </PRE> </BLOCKQUOTE> </DL> This has to be tested with distcheck as the directory structure gets reshuffled. Also make sure they are no left overs after a make clean such that git would refuse to rebase due to a dirty directory. </BODY> </HTML>